Contents

Plot

Soon after their wedding, John and Jenny Grogan escape the
brutal Michigan winters
and relocate to a cottage in southern Florida, where they are hired as reporters for
competing newspapers. At The Palm Beach Post, Jenny
immediately receives prominent front-page assignments, while at the
South Florida
Sun-Sentinel, John finds himself writing obituaries and two-paragraph
articles about mundane news like a fire at the local garbage
dump.

When John senses Jenny is contemplating motherhood, his friend
and co-worker Sebastian Tunney suggests the couple adopt a dog to
see if they're ready to raise a family. From a litter of newborn
yellow labrador retrievers they select Marley
(named after reggae singer Bob Marley), who
immediately proves to be incorrigible. They bring him to Ms.
Kornblut (Kathleen Turner), who firmly believes
any dog can be trained, but when Marley refuses to obey commands,
she expels him from her class.

Editor Arnie Klein offers John a twice-weekly column in which he
can discuss the fun and foibles of everyday living. At first
stumped for material, John realizes the misadventures of Marley
might be the perfect topic for his first piece. Arnie agrees, and
John settles into his new position.

Marley continues to wreak havoc on the household, providing John
with a wealth of material for his column, which becomes a hit with
readers and helps increase the newspaper's circulation. Jenny becomes
pregnant, but loses the baby early in her first trimester. She and
John travel to Ireland for a
belated honeymoon,
leaving the rambunctious dog in the care of a young woman who finds
him impossible to control, especially during the frequent
thunderstorms that plague the area. Soon after returning from their
vacation, Jenny discovers she is pregnant again, and this time she
delivers a healthy boy, Patrick. When she has a second son, Connor,
she opts to give up her job and become a stay-at-home mom, and the
couple decides to move to a larger house in the safer neighborhood
of Boca Raton, where Marley delights in
swimming in the backyard pool.

John and Jenny welcome a daughter, Colleen, to their family.
Although she denies she is experiencing postpartum depression, Jenny
exhibits all the symptoms, including a growing impatience with
Marley and John, who asks Sebastian to care for the dog when Jenny
insists they give him away. She quickly comes to realize he has
become an indispensable part of the family and agrees he can
stay.

John celebrates his 40th birthday. Increasingly disenchanted
with his job, he decides to accept a position as a reporter with
The Philadelphia
Inquirer with Jenny's blessing, and the family moves to a
farm in rural Pennsylvania. Life is idyllic until the
aging Marley begins to show signs of arthritis and deafness. An
attack of gastric
dilatation volvulus almost kills him, but he recovers. When a
second attack occurs, it becomes clear surgery will not help him,
and Marley is euthanised with John at his side. The family pay
their last respects to their beloved pet as they bury him beneath a
tree in their front yard.

Production

Because the film covers 14 years in the life of the dog, 22
different yellow labradors played the part of Marley.[3]

Critical
reception

Todd McCarthy of Variety said the film is "as
broad and obvious as it could be, but delivers on its own terms
thanks to sparky chemistry between its sunny blond stars, Owen
Wilson and Jennifer Aniston, and the unabashed emotion-milking of
the final reel. Fox has a winner here, likely to be irresistible to
almost everyone but cats ... Animated and emotionally accessible,
Aniston comes off better here than in most of her feature films,
and Wilson spars well with her, even if, in the film's weaker
moments, he shows he's on less certain ground with earnest material
than he is with straight-faced impertinence."[7]

Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter
observed that "seldom does a studio release feature so little drama
- and not much comedy either, other than when the dog clowns around
. . . [W]hatever Marley wants to be about - the challenges
of marriage or the balancing act between career and family - gets
subsumed by pet tricks. Dog lovers won't care, and that basically
is the audience for the film. From Fox's standpoint, it may be
enough . . . Marley & Me is a warm and fuzzy family
movie, but you do wish that at least once someone would upstage the
dog."[8]

Roger Ebert of
the Chicago Sun-Times called the
film "a cheerful family movie" and added, "Wilson and Aniston
demonstrate why they are gifted comic actors. They have a
relationship that's not too sitcomish, not too sentimental, mostly
smart and realistic",[9] whilst
Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly graded
the film A-, calling it "the single most endearing and authentic
movie about the human–canine connection in decades. As directed by
David Frankel, though, it's also something more: a disarmingly
enjoyable, wholehearted comic vision of the happy messiness of
family life."[10]

Steve Persall of the St. Petersburg Times was also
very positive, graded the film B and commenting, "Marley &
Me practically leaps at viewers like a pound puppy seeking
affection, and darn if it doesn't deserve some . . . Things could
get mushier or sillier, but Frankel and screenwriters Scott Frank
and Don Roos — who usually handle grittier material — decline to
play the easy, crowd-pleasing game. Their faith in Grogan's simple
tale of loyalty among people and pets is unique, and it pays off .
. . [It] isn't extraordinary cinema, but it relates to everyday
people in the audience in a way that few movies do without being
dull."[11]

Walter Addiego of the San Francisco Chronicle
said, "this love letter to man's best friend will make dog fanciers
roll over and do tricks. It's so warmhearted, you'll want to run
out and hug the nearest big, sloppy mutt."[12] The
praise continued with Carrie Rickey of the Philadelphia Inquirer awarding the
film three out of four stars and saying, "Marley and Me
operates on the assumption that happiness is a warm tongue bath.
And those who endorse this belief will enjoy this shaggy dog story
. . . The anecdotal structure does not make for a gripping movie.
For one thing, there's no conflict, unless you count the tension
between a guy and his untrainable pooch. Yet Marley boasts
animal magnetism . . . Mawkish? Sometimes. But often very funny and
occasionally very moving."[13]

The film had its critics though, with Betsy Sharkey of the
Los
Angeles Times calling it "an imperfect, messy and
sometimes trying film that has moments of genuine sweetness and
humor sprinkled in between the saccharine and the sadness."[14]

Peter
Bradshaw of the The Guardian was unimpressed,
awarding the film one out of five stars and commenting, "the
relentless gooey yuckiness and fatuous stereotyping in this weepy
feelbad comedy gave me the film critic's equivalent of a boiling
hot nose,"[15] while
Philip French of
The
Observer said, "the one redeeming feature is the presence
as Wilson's editor of that great deadpan, put-on artist Alan Arkin,
a comedian who can do a double-take without moving his head."[16]
Further criticism came from Colm Andrew of the Manx
Independent who said that "Marley himself is surprisingly
one-dimensional" and the ending was over-emotional, going "for the
heart-wrenching kind which will always provoke a response, but does
so with absolutely no grace".[17]

Box
office

The film opened on 3,480 screens in the US and Canada on
December 25, 2008. It grossed $14.75 million on its first day of
release, setting the record for the best Christmas Day box office
take ever by surpassing the previous high of $10.2 million achieved
by Ali in
2001.[2]
It earned a total of $51.7 million over the four-day weekend and
placed #1 at the box office, a position it maintained for two
weeks. As of August 13, 2009, it had grossed $143,153,751 in the US
and $99,563,362 in foreign markets for a total worldwide box office
of $242,717,113.[1]

Awards
and nominations

Home media
release

20th Century Fox Home
Entertainment released the film on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on
March 31, 2009. Viewers have the option of a single disc or a
two-disc set called the Bad Dog Edition. The film is in anamorphic widescreen format with
audio tracks in English, French, and Spanish and subtitles in
English and Spanish. Bonus features on the two-disc set include
Finding Marley, Breaking the Golden Rule, On
Set with Marley: Dog of All Trades, Animal Adoption,
When Not to Pee, How Many Takes, a gag reel, and
the Purina Dog Chow Video Hall of Fame and
Marley & Me video contest finalists. The DVD has sold
a total of 3,514,154 copies generating $61.41 million in sales
revenue.[18]

Marley & Me is a 2008 drama-comedy movie that is produced by Gil Netter and Karen Rosenfeltand was directed by David Frankle. The movie opened in theaters on December 25, 2008 and set a record for the largest Christmas Day box office open ever with $14.75 million in ticket sales.

Contents

Plot

The movie is based on the novel and is about a couple, John (Owen Wilson) and Jenny Grogan (Jennifer Aniston) who just get married and move from Michigan to Florida. They get jobs at a local newspaper and Jenny wants a baby so their co-worker, Sebastian Tunney (Eric Dane) suggest they get a puppy before they have a baby to see if they will be good parents. They go shopping for puppies and come across a litter of newborn yellow labrador retrievers, They decide to chose Marley and Marley immediately becomes a handful so they take him to dog trainer Ms. Kornblut (Kathleen Turner) and when Marley doesn't listen to her commands she expels him from her dog class.

Editor Arnie Klein (Alan Arkin) offers John a twice-weekly column in which he can discuss things that are fun and not fun about everyday living. After having writer's block, John notices the misadventures of Marley and thought that it might be the perfect topic for his first piece. Arnie agrees, and John settles into his new position.

Marley continues to give John new material for his column by causing havoc on the house and readers loved it. Jenny becomes pregnant but the baby dies in her first trimester so they decide to take a belated honeymoon to Ireland and leave Marley with a dogsitter and becomes a handful for the dogsitter because of the thunderstorms that are around there. Upon returning from their honeymoon Jenny finds that she is pregnant again and gives birth to a boy, Patrick. Jenny also has a second child Connor and quits her job to become a stay-at-home mom and John take the daily column at work to increase their paycheck. With the crime rate near their home, John and Jenny move to a house in a safer neighbourhood in Boca Raton. Jenny is experiencing all the signs of postpartum depression though she denies it and grows impatient of Marley and John and thinks they should give Marley away while John asks Sebastian to take care of him but Jenny realizes that Marley has become a indispensable part of the family and decides that he can stay. Sebastian takes a job in New York for The New York Times and moves. A couple years later Jenny has a third child a daughter, Colleen. The family moves to Pennsylvania when John takes a job for the The Philadelphia Inquirer with Jenny's approval. Life is good until Marley begins to have arthritis and deafness and develops an attack of gastric dilatation volvulus though he survives it he has another attack and it was clear that surgery would not help the situation, John has Marley euthanised while beside him. The family bury Marley under a tree in their front yard after paying their last respects to him.